The Modern Quilt Guild's blog has a new post today (part of the ongoing 100 Days of Modern Quilting feature) with my tutorial for this lovely block, which was adapted from this lovey pillow by Heather Bostic.
Here's a peek at a project I'm working on using the blocks. Most of these were made with assorted orange and gray scraps from my stash. The background is Kona Charcoal.
The Modern Quilt Guild's 100 Days of Modern Quilting feature started on January 1. If you aren't already following along, check it out today!
Would you like your quilt or tutorial to be featured on The Modern Quilt Guild's blog? Check out this post to find out more.
I've been tying up a lot of loose ends this week. One of those is sending out prizes (including this lovely fabric from Cloud9 and Daisy Janie) to the winners of The Modern Quilt Guild's Project Modern Challenge 3. If you haven't already seen the winning quilts, you can check them out here.
I also wanted to remind everyone that it's not too late to participate in Challenge 4. Read all about the challenge, including our fabulous judge and prizes here.
If you're not already part of a modern quilt guild, I encourage you to check out the official website of The Modern Quilt Guild to find out whether there is already a group meeting in your area. (If there isn't, you can always start one.) MQG welcomes all quilters and it's a lot of fun!
The February meeting of the Portland Modern Quilt Guild is tomorrow. At the meeting, we're going to swap little snack mat quilts, so I decided to make one that looked like the PMQG logo.
It's about 9" x 13" with machine applique letters and circles.
I hope the person who receives it won't mind the white background. I was going for aesthetics over practicality!
For the back, I used fabric scraps to match the circles in the logo. (And, yes, it did get a little themey. I'm dorky that way.)
If you're a Portland quilter of any skill level and haven't yet been to a PMQG meeting, tomorrow night would be a great time to check us out. You can read more about the specifics here.
Have you heard? The Modern Quilt Guild announced the second Project Modern Challenge today. Project Modern is all about celebrating modern design and trying new things. It's a contest, but it's not just for so-called "master quilters." It's for everyone who likes modern design (whatever that means to you) and trying new things. We hope you'll join us!
Read all about the challenge and our fabulous guest judge, Malka Dubrawsky, here.
Pssst . . . Winners will receive one of these fabulous boxes of Kona solids, courtesy of Robert Kaufman. Awesome!
I'm leading the activity (a Charm Square Swap and associated fun) at the May meeting of the Portland Modern Quilt Guildand have written this post mainly for the PMQG peeps who wanted additional information on cutting charm squares. It's general information though, so hopefully others will also find it useful!
So, what's a charm square anyway?
In the parlance of our times, a charm square is a 5" x 5" square of fabric. Today, packages including one or more squares of each fabric in a collection are available from many fabric companies. Packages like these can be a good way to get a little piece of all of the fabrics in a collection at a reasonable price. Today's quilters also cut their own charm squares from yardage, fat quarters, and scraps.
The concept of a Charm Quilt has been around for years. Traditionally, the Charm Quilt concept involved making an entire quilt using a different fabric for every single piece. Because this necessarily involved more different fabrics than most quilters had on hand, swapping charm squares became common. One popular trend was for a quilter to cut two squares, one for her own quilt and one to swap with a friend.
Following are some basic instructions/calculations for cutting your own charm squares.
Note: Before cutting charm squares, make sure your fabric is freshly pressed.
Cutting Charm Squares from Yardage:
Start by laying your folded fabric on your cutting mat. Square up your fabric and cut a straight edge along one side, as shown above.
Measuring from your straight edge, cut a 5" x width of fabric strip.
Note: in the above photo, I've moved around to the other side of my cutting table to make the second cut. For maximum accuracy, I recommend cutting on a table where you can do this. If walking around your table isn't possible, carefully turn your cutting mat around, so as not to disturb your fabric.
Squaring your ruler up with both sides of the 5" strip, cut away the selvage edges of the fabric. (Your fabric should still be folded in half, so you'll be making one cut through both layers.)
Measuring from the former selvage edge, cut four 5" x 5" squares, as shown above.
Because those cuts were made through two layers of fabric, this will result in a total of 8 charm squares.
So, as we just learned, a 5" x width of fabric* strip will produce 8 charm squares. If you're buying yardage to cut multiple charm squares for a swap, you can use the following as a guide:
*These calculations are based on standard cotton print fabric that is about 42" wide. If you're using more narrow fabric, you may end up with fewer squares. Wider fabric will obviously produce more squares.
Cutting Charm Squares from Fat Quarters:
A standard (approximately 18" x 21") fat quarter will produce 12 charm squares.
Lay your fat quarter on your cutting mat, as shown above. Square up your ruler along one on the long (non-selvage) edges and cut a straight edge.
Trim away the selvage edge, squaring up your ruler with the straight edge you just cut.
Measuring from the straight edge along the long side (the first cut you made) and squaring up your ruler with the former selvage edge, cut three strips 5" x approximately 21".
Measuring from the squared-up (former selvage edge) of each strip, cut 4 squares, 5" x 5", for a total of 12 charm squares.
Cutting from Scraps and Fussy Cutting:
If you're cutting charm squares from scraps or odd cuts, a 5" x 5" ruler can be an invaluable aid. Since the ruler is exactly the size of the square you want to cut, you can lay it on top of your fabric scraps and immediately now whether they're large enough.
If you're cutting charm squares from larger prints, it can be fun to "fussy cut" the print. Fussy cutting is when you cut out a particular part of a print -- usually to center a particular image. If you have a 5" x 5" ruler, you can simply move it around on top of your fabric until the part of the print you want to cut is framed beneath it. Cut around all four sides of the ruler to produce your fussy-cut square.
Fussy cutting is obviously not the most conservative approach to using fabric, but the effect of fussy-cut squares in a quilt can be striking.
If you don't have a 5" x 5" ruler, you can make your own guide by cutting a 5" x 5" square from translucent template plastic. If you do this, I recommend drawing diagonal lines from corner to corner, as shown above. This will allow you to easily pinpoint the center of your squares.
Once your template is in place, you can either trace around it with a fabric marking tool and cut it out with scissors or lay a quilting ruler on top of the template, carefully rotating the ruler to cut each side of the charm square.
Fussy-cut charm squares can make a great start to an "I-Spy" quilt for a child. They also look great as the center square in a log cabin or square-in-square block.
I look forward to seeing everyone's squares at the PMQG meeting. Even if you're not in Portland and/or coming to the meeting, I hope you've found something useful here!
I made these potholders for the swap we're having at the Portland Modern Quilt Guild meeting tonight.
Here's an orange, chocolate and gray one. I'm not a fan of feel of the insulated batting. Instead I used two layers of cotton batting and layer of cotton canvas interlining. The canvas helps to keep heat from your hand, but also makes the potholder really sturdy.
In retrospect, this is kind of 70's-tastic. Hopefully someone doesn't mind orange in their kitchen!
I also made a preppy kelly and blue one.
This one seems a little more Spring-appropriate to me.
The backs have pockets for your hand. The pockets are made like the front, but with a single layer of batting.
Did you know that The Modern Quilt Guild is up to 50 branches around the world? Wow! We also have a shiny new Flickr Group.
The Portland group had its first meeting last week at Multnomah Arts Center and I think a good time was had by all. We got to see some wonderful quilts, many of which are posted in our Portland Modern Quilters pool. The Portland group also has a Quilting Saturday Night event coming up this Saturday at Modern Domestic (whose grand opening is tonight!).
Go, MQG!
Did you know that the Modern Quilt Guild is up to 38 branches all over the world? Wow! With that many quilters involved, there are bound to be many different perspectives on what, exactly "modern quilting" means.
Even if you haven't yet joined the guild, we'd love to hear what "modern quilting" means to you. Find out more about our blog meme here. You can read my response here, and stay tuned to the MQG blog for more answers from our Planning Committee Members as the week progresses.
